Marty Taylor keeps busy.
By day, the 46-year-old Baltimore County resident manages Kesher Technology Fund and SIB Investment Group, and he serves as the executive director of ERN Israel, Israel’s largest non-bank merchant payment processing company.
Taylor is the grandson of Holocaust survivors, which, he said, in large part explains his commitment and desire to serve, and to give back — both maternal grandparents survived the Holocaust. They were from Poland and met in a displaced persons camp in Germany after the war. They made their way to the United States, while many of the siblings who survived went to Israel.
Taylor’s maternal grandparents owned a few stores, including a corner grocery store on Mosher Street, in Baltimore City. “They lived above the store where they worked 364 days a year, taking off only for Yom Kippur to provide for my mom and her brother,” Taylor said. “We had every holiday at my grandparents’ home, and we never went out before we all had Shabbat dinner together.”
He is married to his high school sweetheart, Vered, who was born in Israel and who currently serves as the treasurer of the board of trustees for Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School. The Taylors have two children — Maya, who will be starting nursing school in the fall at the University of Delaware, and Guy, who is in high school and who, Taylor shared, loves tennis.
Taylor’s major volunteer commitment is his role as president of the Maryland chapter of Friends of the Israel Defense Forces. This, Taylor said, is “the least I can do support the soldiers of the IDF who protect Israel and our people.”
Taylor also volunteers to support the Jewish community in Baltimore.
He currently serves on the Beth Tfiloh Synagogue Executive Board as the Beth Tfiloh Camps committee chair. Taylor has a lot of personal history at Beth Tfiloh, having grown up there and started as a child in its preschool. And he has given back to the school that helped shaped him in many ways, having served two terms as chair of the Beth Tfiloh Alumni Association, and, with his wife, co-chaired Beth Tfiloh’s Annual Spotlight Event featuring The Idan Raichel Project in 2016.
Taylor’s civic and community engagement includes participating in Baltimore Jewish Council’s Leadership Development Program and the Acharai Fellows Program. He is current chair of Acharai Alumni. He also serves on Israel Bond’s Young Leadership.
Taylor said he enjoys giving back to his community, and he cherishes the time he spends with family. He has served as an assistant scout master for Boy Scout Troop 97, sponsored by Har Sinai-Oheb Shalom Congregation. It was in Troop 97 where Taylor earned the coveted rank of Eagle Scout in 1992, and it was there that his teenage son earned his Eagle Scout rank last year.
Taylor’s ties to Israel — which he has visited a hundred times — are strong due in part because his wife is from Israel, and because he has family who settled and raised families in Israel after the Holocaust.
And he and his wife have also found a way to nurture Israel’s youth, by hosting several youth — Shinshinim — through the Macks Center for Jewish Education.
Taylor said that his parents were a major influence in developing his commitment to community, “My parents, Harold and Rozzie Taylor, taught me about giving back,” he said. “They were both involved in Beth Tfiloh while I was growing up, in the parents’ association, the Beth Tfiloh Brotherhood, among several activities. My father was and still serves as an assistant scoutmaster in Troop 97. He camped, hiked, paddled and pedaled with me along my scouting journey and now he is there doing it with his grandson, Guy. They are the most caring parents around.”
Taylor is grateful for the man he became, inspired by his hardworking grandparents and doting parents. And he has a reminder that propels him forward in his commitment to family and community, “As part of my siyum for the Acharai Fellows Program, I wrote myself a goal statement which I have framed in my office. It reads: ‘To be an inspirational leader, advocating change and professionalism within my organization and modeling our success for the greater Baltimore Jewish Community and beyond.’ I look it at often and put my all into everything I do, both professional and volunteer, working to set an example for my children and all those who follow.”
